Errors in school : their causes and treatment / by John Adams.

  • John Adams
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Errors in school : their causes and treatment / by John Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/344 page 14
    H in those old days, if they hanged a man for stealing a goose they might also behead a man who stole peas. While howlers stand out as the picturesque forms of error, and are therefore comparable to lighthouses on the great ocean of inaccuracy, there is a vast body of commonplace error continually interfering with the teacher’s work. Accordingly, it is well worth his while to make a careful study of the subject from the professional point of view. Just as we often get our pupils to understand a troublesome word by directing them to a word that means just the opposite, so we may get a better understanding of a truth by considering the corresponding error. So the study of error may be regarded as in a sort the negative study of truth. There is need for standards in this study, and for a delimitation of the fields of truth and error. The purpose of the following pages is not to treat of error in general as the negative aspect of truth, nor of the great problem of the nature of things. In short, we are not concerned with metaphysics. It is proposed to treat of error with special reference to the work of the teacher. But even with this limitation there is room for further restriction. The teacher’s work has two main aspects—instruction and education. The dis¬ tinction is real and important, but too much may be made of it if we treat the matter controversially. No doubt the process of education is one and indivisible, but for practical purposes it is con¬ venient to regard it from the two aspects, the teach¬ ing aspect and the wider aspect that includes the whole. It may be said that we can educate with-
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